Instruction Quotes - Page 32

• I never did anything, great or small, without obtaining in advance express instructions from Adolf Hitler or any of my superiors.

  Adolf Eichmann

  Obtaining, Superiors

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• Most of us become so rigidly fixed in the ruts carved out by genetic programming and social conditioning that we ignore the options of choosing any other course of action. Living exclusively by genetic and social instructions is fine as long as everything goes well. But the moment bioloical or social goals are frustrated- which in the long run is inevitable - a person must formulate new goals, and create a new flow activity for himself, or else he will always waste his energies in inner turmoil.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Running, Long, Goal

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2001). “Flow: the psychology of optimal experience”

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• A little instruction in the elements of chartography—a little practice in the use of the compass and the spirit level, a topographical map of the town common, an excursion with a road map—would have given me a fat round earth in place of my paper ghost.

  Mary Antin

  Practice, Use, Elements

  Mary Antin (2013). “The Promised Land”, p.150, Courier Corporation

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• Players must be able to carry out simple instructions from the bench to the court. If they can't, then they can't play

  Bobby Knight

  Basketball, Simple, Player

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• Comrades! The kulak uprising in your five districts must be crushed without pity. You must make example of these people. (1) Hang (I mean hang publicly, so that people see it) at least 100 kulaks, rich bastards, and known bloodsuckers. (2) Publish their names. (3) Seize all their grain. (4) Single out the hostages per my instructions in yesterday's telegram. Do all this so that for miles around people see it all, understand it, tremble, and tell themselves that we are killing the bloodthirsty kulaks and that we will continue to do so ...Find tougher people.

  Vladimir Lenin

  War, Mean, Yesterday

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• Each of us is born with two contradictory sets of instructions: a conservative tendency, made up of instincts for self-preservation, self-aggrandizement, and saving energy, and an expansive tendency made up of instincts for exploring, for enjoying novelty and risk-the curiosity that leads to creativity belongs to this set. But whereas the first tendency requires little encouragement or support from outside to motivate behaviour, the second can wilt if not cultivated.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Encouragement, Creativity, Self

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2009). “Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and”, p.11, Harper Collins

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• The gratification of curiosity rather frees us from uneasiness than confers pleasure; we are more pained by ignorance than delighted by instruction. Curiosity is the thirst of the soul; it inflames and torments us, and makes us taste every thing with joy, however otherwise insipid, by which it may be quenched.

  Samuel Johnson

  Ignorance, Joy, Soul

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1836). “The works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: with an essay on his life and genius”, p.163

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• It is the act of an ill-instructed man to blame others for his own bad condition; it is the act of one who has begun to be instructed, to lay the blame on himself; and of one whose instruction is completed, neither to blame another, nor himself.

  Epictetus

  Men, Blame, Ill

  Epictetus (2012). “Enchiridion”, p.3, Courier Corporation

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